The use of RFID tags has significantly increased recently, as costs of the tags and associated equipment has plumitted. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are used to track products, as well as other uses such as toll tags and animal identification.
A typical RFID tag requires no battery as it utilizes the energy of the scanner, the tag acting as a transponder to relay generally basic identification information, which information is used for tracking via a central computer.
On another front, with enhanced environmental awareness, local and regional governments have discussed implementing deposits on thermoplastic grocery bags or the like, to raise revenues as well as discourage littering, while encouraging recycling.
However, a typical customer can utilize literally dozens of bags every month, typically placing the bags in one of the bags. Thus many of the grocery bags can be stuffed in a single bag. By the time a customer gets to a recycling area to return the bags, there may be literally hundreds of bags stuffed in several of the bags.
It would not be cost or time effective for an employee of the recipient of the bags to sort through and count each bag in the collection of bags returned. Further, the deposit to be returned to the customer must be calculated and refunded to the client. Also, the deposit for the bag may vary depending upon the jurisdiction and use, and there is no easy, fast, cost effective means of determining the deposit paid upon the bag. A jurisdiction refunding a fixed deposit price on all t-shirt bags could find itself paying monies under the guise of deposit refunds on bags which had not deposit paid thereon, or bags which had a lesser deposit paid than the intended bags for that jurisdiction.
It is believed there is no automated system for receiving, counting, identifying, calculating, and refunding the deposit, thus at this point a deposit return scheme is believed impractical due to the operational costs utilizing the above discussed manual, non-automated techniques.